13. The Marquis de Sade spent most of his life locked up for perversion
Unsurprisingly, the Marquis de Sade was a sadist. The French aristocrat became so notorious for his deviant sexual practices, perversions, and erotic writings which combined pornography with philosophy and violent sexual fantasies, that his name gave rise to the terms sadist and sadism. His sexual fantasies’ emphasis on violence, criminality, and blasphemy – and his real-life partaking of criminally violent sexual practices – kept him behind bars in prisons and insane asylums for most of his adult life. He spent 32 years behind bars, including 10 in the Bastille. Most of his writings were penned while he was incarcerated.
In his early twenties, he did short stints behind bars for mistreating prostitutes. In 1768, he held a beggar hostage in his home, flogging and pouring hot wax on her. In 1772, de Sade and a servant were arrested for sodomizing prostitutes after knocking them out with roofies. They escaped to Italy, and were sentenced in absentia to death. Returning to France and laying low in a rural castle, he lured youngsters with offers of employment, then sexually and physically abused them. He eventually ended up locked in the Bastille, then in a mental asylum. Released in 1790 amidst the French Revolution’s turmoil, he promptly got himself elected as a National Convention representative. His final stint behind bars came in 1801 when Napoleon had him arrested for blasphemy and pornography, and kept him locked up for the rest of his life.
